


truth is only hearsay

by tearbending (maremote)



Series: azula redemptionverse [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Emotional Hurt, Force-Feeding, Gen, Hurt, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Restraints, improper handling of mental breakdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29221965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maremote/pseuds/tearbending
Summary: Azula after Sozin's Comet.AKAAzula loses her firebending.She can't be certain if it happens right away or if fizzles out like a lonely campfire in the rain, because she doesn't even try to firebend for- weeks? months? Time is nebulous in the institution. Sometimes, standing in the shower, she makes a feeble effort to exhale steam, to keep herself warm, but it never works on the first try and she never gives it a second one. And while she's aware of the terrible, awful lead-weight of *cold* that's settled deep in her gut during her every waking moment, she doesn't put the pieces together until she tries to burn an attendant and it doesn't work.
Relationships: Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: azula redemptionverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098305
Kudos: 5





	truth is only hearsay

**Author's Note:**

> his work is part of a larger azula-centric redemption series, so if you enjoy this, consider subscribing to the series! cws in end notes.

Azula falls back into loss. 

She falls so far and so deep that she can't even articulate  _ what it is _ she's lost. All she knows that she's drowning in the impossible darkness of her world, and she doesn't know how to stop. 

She starts laughing when Zuko rises to leave after his visit, and her chest shakes with the intensity of it. She's aware it's coming out a little hysterical- well, maybe more than a  _ little- _ but she can't seem to stop. It feels good to laugh- feels like an exorcism of some demon deep within her chest- feels like it did coughing up phlegm when they were little and sick. Feels like her lungs are screaming, twin wings fluttering inside the cage of her ribs, and Azula  _ laughs, _ high and uncontrollable, until she finds she can't stop, and then she starts to get very scared, because her body's never turned against her like this ( _ except it has _ ). There's a panic to it, a scratching underneath her skin, and she's uncomfortable aware of the roughness of her throat, the way the sound of her manic cackling ricochets off the walls and makes her wince, and her ribs are like pale knives digging into her body. Azula curls over and retches, heaves, nothing comes out but it feels like something  _ should _ , so she sticks her fingers down her throat-

There's shouting and a door slamming and then there are hands on her, and she gags on her own fist as it's pulled out of her mouth. The bitter taste of bile lingers inside her mouth as she screams, and she's being pinned down, her left hand still wet with spit- she rears up and slams her head backwards, down onto the stone floor. There's a sickening crack and then merciful darkness. The last thing she's aware of is the sharp, pinching pain of her lips, cracked and split open.

When she wakes up again, her fingers feel funny.

It's dark, both outside and in Azula's room. There are familiar, thick leather straps looped around Azula's wrists, ankles, knees, stomach, binding her to her bed, flat on her back. Moonlight trickles into the room between the window's bars. 

Azula's so, so, so,  _ so _ tired.

She flexes her fingers, curls them into her palms and realizes her nails have been trimmed all the way down to the quick.  _ I didn't even scratch anyone this time, _ Azula thinks miserably,  _ not even myself. _ A precautionary measure, then.

Whoever gave her the manicure clearly didn't care about appearances- she can feel that her nails are almost octagonal in their new, jagged shortness. It's such a  _ stupid _ thing to be upset about, but for some reason it cuts deep and the insult of it settles in her bones with an aching numbness that reminds her of freezing cold. 

_ I didn't scratch anyone, _ her mind repeats, unhelpfully.  _ I didn't fuck it up. I did everything right. _ She can feel the fuzziness between her temples and burning in her eyes that always precedes tears and makes a valiant effort to keep the floodgates closed before she lets the sob balloon in her chest and escape through her lips in a high, thin whimper. 

Azula goes to scrub the evidence of her sorrow off her face and realizes that her wrists are still pinned down on the bed. The humiliation of it  _ hurts, _ and it has her pulling in another deep, dragging breath and sobbing it out. 

Every tear that traces a hot path down her cheek fills her with shame at her own weakness, but she can't seem to stop, and she doesn't know if she wants to. It feels so  _ good _ to do this- it feels like finally spitting up a hair stuck in her mouth for days- her stomach trembles against the restraints, and anger ripples into the unexplainable sense of loss she feels that's so deep it physically hurts her heart.

It's such a strange kind of pain, this- no less intense for the confusion and humiliation that accompany it. 

After what feels like several dynasties of sobs wracking her body, Azula feels them slow in tempo. Then her nails scrape against her palms, and she's off to the races again. It  _ hurts _ \- everything  _ hurts- _ and it's not  _ fair. _ Azula  _ did what she was supposed to. _

How  _ dare _ they, she thinks, and in some other world where things are as they should be she would have thought it with righteous anger, or with security in the promise of revenge, but in this one all she feels is a stinging mix of sorrow and piteous rage.

She blinks, and it is morning. 

She doesn't struggle as the straps are undone and she is maneuvered into the cold little tiled room where she showers. She doesn't struggle as she is stripped and washed by impersonal, unfeeling hands. They slide a sponge up and down her arms, her back, across her collarbones. Azula holds her trembling arms to her chest and they pull them away with no ceremony. 

Azula could resist, knows six ways she could kill the attendant manhandling her like a doll in under a minute, but she feels half asleep, submerged underwater, so she just lets it happen. Lets them scrub her chest with discomfort burning deep insider her, snatches her arms back up as soon as she can, feels tears prick the backs of her eyes at the  _ injustice _ of it.

Except the worst part isn't even how she's being treated; it's that she knows, somewhere deep inside herself, that she deserves it. Her failure to defeat Zuko, her  _ breakdown _ , was a moral failure as well as a humiliation. Azula  _ failed. _ She  _ lost _ . And worse than that, she lost to  _ Zuko. _

(Azula remembers being five and being the one Father could be proud of, the one he could show off; the one with natural talent. She remembers not understanding how to be kind as easily as Zuko could, remembers Mother praising him for things she  _ didn't know how to do. _ )

(Azula remembers being six and beating Zuko in their tussles  _ every time. _ Remembers registering his wide, terrified, crestfallen eyes every time she ended up on top, how Father would ignore him for a week afterwards and it'd make him go tense and silent, how he'd stop eating or vomit it all up after dinner. Azula remembers letting him win, just once, and rising to her feet afterwards, feeling good about the joy in his face, before a hard, fast slap cracked along the side of her face. Remembers the sweet, metallic taste of her own blood and half her face stinging for the rest of the day.)

(Azula never lost to Zuko again. Azula never  _ lost _ again.)

(Azula remembers being seven and outperforming Zuko in front of father, executing perfect firebending form, only for Mother to say nothing. After Zuko fell flat on his face trying to imitate her, Mother held him to her and praised him for trying.  _ As if Azula didn't try. _ )

Azula remembers Zuko kneeling before Father, tears running down his face, prostrate and cowardly, begging for forgiveness, refusing to fight. Forfeiting the match. Miserably accepting his fate. Not even raising a finger in his defense as he was publicly humiliated and  _ burned. _

Father would be so ashamed of her now.

But Father is dead.  _ He _ lost, too. 

There's a contradiction in there somewhere, something important Azula can't quite put her finger on, but her mind is too foggy to pin it down and she gives up the attempt. 

* * *

"I want to  _ help _ you," Zuko insists.

Azula says nothing. 

Zuko looks  _ exhausted. _ His one good eye is ringed with a deep grey hollow, and he's lost weight since the last time he visited. His robes are still immaculate- deep crimson and burnt umber hang off his shoulders, tied at the waist with a deep gold sash. His cape pools behind him. His shoulders slump, just a little, and he's rubbing his thumbs against the side of his index fingers the way he unconsciously does when he's nervous. 

He doesn't look worn out, though, strangely; his piercing gold eyes hold barely a trace of the fatigue he clearly feels. There's something steely in his gaze, too. He's like... old leather. Worn out and creased, but still held together, still tough and dependable. 

Old leather still wears thin, though, and it's a disgrace that he's wearing his exhaustion so plainly on his face and clothing. Zuko's always been a terrible liar, a terrible actor. She might laugh if she felt capable of it at the irony of the steady air Zuko's projecting. 

Are all the Fire Nation just fools? Is that it? No one could look at Zuko, where he kneels on the stone floor before her, and think him a suitable leader for the most powerful nation of the world. 

( _ This is the boy who beat you, _ Father whispers in her ear.  _ Pathetic. _ )

And it is, and  _ she _ is, but nothing makes sense because  _ how could this happen? _ How did  _ Zuzu _ of all people take the throne after Father? She can accept that she underestimated the monk, the Avatar. It's clear to her now that his wide-eyed innocence was an act, that he meant to murder her father all along. She has to admit that even she was fooled by him. 

But  _ how did Zuko defeat her? _ It just didn't make sense.

Azula is strong. Father is-  _ was _ strong. Zuko is weak. 

Azula and Father are strong because they command respect, because they strike fear into the hearts of all they meet, because they are ruthless and cunning and powerful. Zuko is weak because he talks to turtleducks and trips over his words around handsome boys and grants mercy and lets himself be bossed around and teased by pretty much anyone, lets himself fade into the background when he feels less equipped to handle a situation than someone else, learned to fight with daos despite being a  _ firebender _ -

Except, Zuko is the one calm and determined in tailored Fire Lord garb while Azula is frazzled and shattering in too-loose robes and Father is- well.

None of it makes sense.

"-zula," Zuko says, and she snaps back to reality. He's looking at her with a carefully manufactured air of casual concern. "You with me?"

Azula narrows her eyes at him, too tired to do anything else. "Never."

He sighs. "I know you still think Father was right. Trust me, I  _ know _ you want it to be true. But there was so much wrong with how he treated us-,"

"Treated  _ you, _ " Azula interrupts, deadpan. The cold emptiness in her stomach gnaws at her like a hunger. "He treated me just fine. And if you'd just been better, he wouldn't have hated you like he did."

She's expecting a flinch. It doesn't come. Instead, Zuko continues, low and cajoling, and his words tease up in her the uncomfortable doubt, the biting confusion that she'd felt earlier on, shivering naked in the showers.  _ Azula is strong. Zuko is weak. _

"That's the  _ point, _ Azula," Zuko insists. "He was our  _ father. _ We shouldn't have had to live up to some-"

"I have a question, Zuko," Azula says, cutting him off. "If you had deserved Father's love, would you be saying any of this?"

Zuko opens his mouth. Closes it. 

And there it is; an answer for her to settle into, comfortable and familiar. She feels it click puzzle pieces together in her mind, fill in the cracks with gold like the  _ kintsugi _ vases Mother loved to decorate her rooms with. 

("Look, Zuko," she'd say, kneeling beside him, hands resting on his shoulders, cheek pressed close to his while Azula watched from the doorway. "Just because it is imperfect doesn't mean it is not beautiful." )

Zuko finds his words, eventually. It doesn't matter. Azula knows why he's the way he is. Everything he's done has been in an attempt to justify his own weakness. Zuko's ridden the coattails of those who are greater and more powerful than him to power, and the entire Fire Nation is going to pay the price. 

For the first time in a long time, Azula knows exactly where she stands with him.

* * *

Azula loses her firebending. 

She can't be certain if it happens right away or if fizzles out like a lonely campfire in the rain, because she doesn't even try to firebend for- weeks? months? Time is nebulous in the institution. Sometimes, standing in the shower, she makes a feeble effort to exhale steam, to keep herself warm, but it never works on the first try and she never gives it a second one. And while she's aware of the terrible, awful lead-weight of  _ cold _ that's settled deep in her gut during her every waking moment, she doesn't put the pieces together until she tries to burn an attendant and it doesn't work.

She's being washed. They'd given her the sponge at first and left her alone, but Azula had found herself still immobile, staring dumbly at the sponge in her hand, eyes tracing the lines of its pores. 

Someone said something from behind her, calmly at first; but she couldn't seem to bring her limbs to respond, and any patience bled out of the muffled sounds she could barely hear from beyond the fog in her head. Next thing she knew there were hands on her, holding her hand, taking the sponge from her, moving it across her body, and Azula feels her lips pull back in a snarl, tries to push heat through her wrist, to burn off the attendants' fingertips, but it's like trying to throw up on an empty stomach; it ends with her dry-heaving and retching bile and spit on her knees, disgusted sounds from the women echoing over cold tile.

And then a voice cuts clear and bright through the haze- "Disappointing."

Azula looks up, eyes wild, and Father's  _ right there, _ dressed in the same clean, pale robes as the attendants, his hair long in the back but cut into choppy bangs Azula remembers from her own reflection. 

" _ Father, _ " she breathes, and lurches to her feet, cheeks burning, and he keeps talking, but his mouth isn't moving; it's only his voice that echoes through the room, despite his tightly pressed lips and his unblinking golden eyes. (Except they're not  _ his _ eyes, they're  _ Zuko's _ eyes. Why are they Zuko's eyes?)

"Look at yourself," his voice booms, and Azula winces. It's too loud; she appreciated his vocal clarity at first, it cut through the mind-jelly she feels immobilized in so often, the perennial dizziness and lethargy; but now it  _ hurts _ with its loudness, and it feels like it's increasing every time he speaks, too, so she ends up on her knees with her hands pressed tightly over her ears, nails cut to the quick pressed against her lobes. 

He keeps talking, but it's so loud that it makes her ears fuzz, and all Azula can pay attention to is where her knees meet the wet floor. The pale skin, with its blossoming blue and red roses of bruises, presses uncomfortable against the ceramic tiles. She feels so  _ tired. _ The dripping of water from her wet hair to the puddle at her feet is hypnotic, and she finds herself caught in a loop, wondering when the next drop will splash below her, wondering what's taking it so long, wondering if she'd dreamt the last drop, and then  _ plop _ down it comes and she starts over, a vague sense of  _ deja vu _ hovering about her ears like pipe smoke, wondering when the next drop will splash below her, wondering what's taking it so long, wondering if she'd dreamt the last drop, and then  _ plop _ down it comes, wondering when the next drop will splash below her, wondering what's taking it so long, has she thought this before? Wondering if she'd dreamt the last drop, and then  _ plop _ down it comes, wondering when the next drop will splash below her, this is getting ridiculous, such a strange sense of deja vu, wondering what's taking it so long, wondering if she'd dreamt the last drop, and then  _ plop _ down it comes, and then there are arms on her pulling her up and the sudden movement has her squeezing her eyes shut against the nausea and dizziness that rises up in her throat-

It's dark when she wakes up.

* * *

Shiori sets her tray down with a clatter.

"You need to eat," she says. "It's been three days."

(It's been longer than that, actually.)

"Hey," Shiori snaps, kneeling by her, then her voice softens. "Princess?" 

It's raining, today, and it's depressingly dark inside Azula's cell. Her head, too.

Azula doesn't eat. 

* * *

"Azula, listen to me." 

"Don't tell me what to do."

It's Zuko. He's talking to her, saying... what is he saying?

"You cared about Mai. About Ty Lee. Why else would you care when they turned on you?" .

Azula squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn't want to think about that. 

Not for the reasons Zuko thinks- she  _ doesn't _ care about either Mai or Ty Lee. She doesn't. She knows this somewhere deep in her gut, that they don't matter to her. Her mother liked to think she picked her playmates based on their personalities because she liked them. Azula knows the truth. She picked Mai because she seemed too apathetic to ever bother challenging her, and Ty Lee because, well. Ty Lee standing up to her? Laughable.

"You're wrong, Zuko. I don't care about anyone," she says, only does she say it? Because Zuko's still waiting for an answer, and she's still staring desolately down at the ground, like she never even opened her mouth. 

Her mother's eyes glint sadly at her from behind the new Fire Lord. Zuko keeps talking.

* * *

Azula stops eating. 

Well. She stops eating  _ voluntarily. _

* * *

"It doesn't matter how many times you push me away, Azula. I'm going to fix you."

The words roll of Zuko's tongue effortlessly, like they cost him nothing to say. They settle between them, forcing them apart more than the crossed metal bars already do. 

_ Fix you _ , Zuko says, and Azula hasn't been able to get herself to care about anything in a long time, has borne both insult and injury within these walls silently, but this fills her with a quiet, patient rage. 

It costs her the price of a scratchy throat and spinning head, but she manages to croak out, "Like you'll fix the Fire Nation?" 

Zuko blinks at her answer, the first in... a while. "Yes, actually," he finally says. "Like I'm fixing the Fire Nation. It'll be hard, but you can change."

"What makes you think I want to?" she bites back at him.

A pause. "Do you like your life right now?"

" _ You _ did this to me.  _ You _ put me here." 

"People can change. Circumstances can change, Azula-"

"No," Azula says, quiet. "They can't. You can pretend that's true all you want. But it's not."

She examines him, pale and drawn and determined as he is. Her eyes float lazily over him; he looks the same as he always does, and an outside eye wouldn't be able to notice him, but Azula  _ knows _ Zuko, and something start to nag at her. She doesn't know quite what it is, but...

"Something's off with you." 

Zuko scoffs, but she notices him fade a shade paler as he speaks. "You're one to talk. Azula,  _ please, _ " he goes on, far too quickly, clearly bluffing to change the topic. "You're all I have left. Mother's gone, or dead, and Father's locked up and never getting out-"

" _ He's alive? _ "

Zuko goes very, very still.

Azula's heart skips a beat. 

"Azula," Zuko starts, slow, but she's barely paying attention.  _ Father is alive. _

They  _ left him alive. _ It's- it's-

It's fucking  _ hilarious. _

The Avatar, bearer of tremendous power, capable of harnessing all four elements, capable of surviving Azula's lightning, capable of defeating the Pheonix King,  _ left the most dangerous man on Earth alive. _

Later, in the shower, Azula barely notices the cold, despite the shivers that wrack her body. It's background noise against the curtains that are being drawn aside in her head; it feels like she's dusting off the old gears of a mind before it was broken. The attendants don't seem to notice, despite how  _ obvious _ the slice of clarity in Azula's head feels. A bucket of water is upturned over her head, and her bangs, now grown out, dangle down in front of her face as Zuko's words replay over and over again in her head. 

_ Circumstances can change, Azula. _

The hollow, cold pit in Azula's stomach sparks with warmth, and she breathes steam into the air. 

**Author's Note:**

> cws: attempted self-induced vomiting, mentions of force-feeding, incorrect handling of mental breakdowns, disordered eating, violation of privacy, descriptions of panic attacks. 
> 
> wow looks like things are *heating up* hahaha i'll see myself out
> 
> also, i have a lot of feelings about zuko and azula growing up in an abusive household and azula being the "good child" and how that basically helped destroy their relationship with each other.
> 
> comments feed the writer! also, [i'm on tumblr!](https://zuko-best-boi.tumblr.com/)


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